Animal Practice Gets Cancelled As NBC Makes Room For Whitney

In one of the least shocking moves of the 2012-2013 television season, NBC has decided to cancel freshman comedy Animal Practice. NBC initially had high hopes for the program, even premiering the show in one of the network’s few (and coveted) post-Olympics timeslots. However, each week the ratings for the show faltered a little more, and ultimately, NBC decided the show wasn’t worth keeping on the schedule.

However, Justin Kirk and Crystal the monkey’s veterinarian-based comedy won’t be cut from the network just yet. Instead, the show will continue running until around this time next month, when Whitney is set to return to the schedule. While bad for Animal Practice, the news is actually swell for Whitney fans, who’ve been waiting patiently for a return date, since NBC pushed back the premiere dates for Whitney and Community to make room for new programming.

Deadline first reported the news, noting that Whitney will now run at 8 p.m. on Wednesdays, which will pit it back-to-back with another multi-camera comedy, Guys with Kids.

Despite personally not feeling Animal Practice was all that bad (nor all that good), people really seemed to hate on the monkey premise, and that may very well have led to the comedy’s downfall in the ratings. Last night’s barely noticeable 1.0 rating in the 18-49 demographic probably went the extra mile to secure NBC’s decision on the matter. Regardless, Justin Kirk is a pretty talented guy, and if some other project doesn’t snap him up in the near future, I’d be really surprised.